by Tessa Cole
Titus sat forward, a strange desperate hope flashing across his expression for a second before returning to anger. With a huff, he grabbed the bag — and the ends of his towel to keep it secure — and marched out of the kitchen
“And you’re the sundress.” Nova set a second bag in front of me and sank into the chair across from me, but her attention was back on Sebastian and Cassius, barely giving me a cursory glance. “I changed today’s meeting to tomorrow like you asked.”
“You really think this will be solved by tomorrow?” Cassius handed Sebastian his dirty plate to put into the dishwasher.
I prayed it would be. Then he could get to work removing my brand.
“Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Except Sebastian didn’t sound as if he believed that, making my hope wither. “But I’m meeting someone I don’t want to piss off.”
“That would be a first,” Cassius said.
“There are lots of people I don’t want to piss off.” Sebastian’s smile turned wicked. “But you’re just too much fun.”
“Oh? You think it’s fun to piss me off?” Cassius demanded.
“Guys—” I bit the inside of my cheek. What was the point? At least they weren’t arguing about anything serious.
Sebastian chuckled and glanced at me, but I grabbed the bag with the sundress and left the kitchen. The sooner I changed, the sooner we could get to Left of Lincoln and separate me and Titus.
I reached the bedroom and for a second I wasn’t sure I wanted to look inside the bag. Whatever the dress was, it wasn’t going to be appropriate for the chief physician of Operations.
But then not looking like myself was the whole point, and I wouldn’t have to wear it for long.
Much to my surprise, the dress was tasteful. It was white with large blue flowers the color of my eyes and skimmed my curves perfectly. The skirt flared a bit and hung a modest one inch above my knees, and the sexiest thing about it was the sweetheart neckline revealing a little more cleavage than I usually liked and its behind-the-neck strap that exposed most of my back, forcing me to go without a bra. Thankfully, I wasn’t as well-endowed as Nova and there was enough support in the dress for me to feel comfortable going without.
To top it off, a pair of white sandals in my size with a practical heel had been included.
I was dressed and about to put on the sandals when someone knocked on the door.
“Are you decent?” Cassius asked.
“Just putting on my sandals.”
“Not what I asked,” he said as he opened the door.
His gaze swept over me, his eyes wide with surprise, and a hot curl of desire unfurled low within me even though I was sure his surprise wasn’t at my appearance. He’d seen me in a dress… although not recently. But still—
“It surprised me too.” I gave a slow twirl — still mindful of how tired I was — making the skirt gently swish around my legs. “I can’t believe Sebastian had his assistant pick up something reasonable.”
“Ah… yeah,” Cassius said, his voice gruff. “I expect Nova has a different taste in clothes than you.”
“That much is obvious.” I sat on the edge of the bed to put on the sandals. “Is everyone waiting on me?” I hadn’t spent a lot of time changing, but I had moved slower than usual. Breakfast had helped a little and now the room wasn’t spinning, but I was still exhausted and my magic was still low and I was struggling to keep my fear at bay.
“Yeah.” He crossed his arms and his expression hardened. “I called Priam to cover your shift at Operations.”
“Good.” My fingers shook as I tried to secure the catch on the sandal, but the more I fought to still my hands and not let Cassius see me tremble, the stronger my shaking became. “Tell him I should be able to take the afternoon portion of the shift,” I said with as even a tone as possible.
“No.” He knelt and nudged my hands away to buckle my sandal. “You look almost as exhausted as you did last night. If the situation wasn’t so urgent, I’d make Bane wait a day.”
“And by urgent you mean those men coming after Titus.” Not the fact that I was trapped. Again. Which, if the idea of being controlled by someone didn’t terrify me so much it wouldn’t have been the most urgent issue to me. Without the men coming after Titus, being leashed to him didn’t endanger me.
“I mean this whole mess,” he said as he buckled my other sandal. “You’re magically bound to a man we know nothing about, who has dangerous men coming after him for reasons we also know nothing about. For all we know, Titus broke out of jail where he was sent for committing a crime.”
“You don’t really believe that?” I didn’t. Although I didn’t know why. Titus’s hurt and anger didn’t seem like it came from a criminal who’d been caught. Except I had no proof. All I had to go on was my instinct. Cassius, however, was right. We didn’t know anything about Titus or Sebastian for that matter… and if I couldn’t get rid of my mating brand, I could find myself trapped in the same situation, bound to a man who I knew nothing about. “If those men had been fae law enforcement officers they would have identified themselves, not tried to stab Sebastian in the back.”
“I’m not willing to risk your life by letting you stay around Bane and his friend to find out.” He finished with the buckle on my sandal and stood.
He did not just say that! “Not letting?”
“The situation is dangerous,” he insisted, missing the point.
“And I don’t need your permission.” I pushed past him and strode out of the bedroom. “I’m as capable of assessing this situation as you.”
“No. You’re not,” he said, falling into step beside me, smoke curling from his hands. “You don’t have any tactical training.”
“I don’t need to have tactical training. I healed your injuries. I know how dangerous they are.”
Cassius huffed. “You have no idea how dangerous these men are.”
“I do know.” I glared at him even though I knew I’d never win this fight.
The light in Cassius’s eyes flared. “No, you don’t.”
“You know, you two should just fuck and get it over with,” Sebastian said from his spot by the door.
Titus, standing beside him dressed in a black T-shirt, black fatigues, and combat boots like Cassius, stiffened.
“Don’t be crude,” Cassius snapped.
“Don’t be a prude,” Sebastian shot back. “Man with all that restrained decorum, angel sex must be boring… or fucking wild as hell.” His pale gaze met mine, making me instantly throb with need. “Which is it? Are you an animal in bed?”
I bit back my frustration. How was this the same man who’d offered me something to sleep in and bought me a tasteful dress? And why did I still react to him like this? It was just a game. Just. A. Game
“My sexual predilections are none of your business,” I said, painfully aware that just saying predilections made me sound like a prude as well. “Are we getting this leash spell broken or not?”
Sebastian snorted and opened his front door, gesturing for all of us to leave. Titus marched out first and Cassius followed.
“Sweetheart, you need to work on your comebacks,” Sebastian said as I passed.
“Well then,” I replied, pitching my voice so only Sebastian could hear me, “given that we’re going to work out a type of payment suitable for both of us, I guess you’ll never know what I’m like in bed.”
Heat flooded my face and I quickly turned away from him.
Why did I just say that? Words had just come out of my mouth and—
And now he was going to tease me more. There’d be no end to it, and with it just being a game to him, all it would do would rub in the fact that I irrationally ached for him and he didn’t want me.
Chapter 11
Amiah
The ride in the elevator down to the parking garage was tense. Cassius stood stiffly at the back with Titus, who didn’t even look at me as I entered, while Sebastian stood beside me with that look in his eyes that said
he knew a secret dirty joke about me. I prayed he wouldn’t carry on our conversation where Cassius and Titus could hear—
Actually, I prayed he wouldn’t continue our conversation at all.
Why had I said that! If anything proved that I was losing my self-control, that was it, and without a doubt, given the heat in my face, my cheeks were bright red, giving it all away.
The door slid open to the cool damp underground garage, and I hurried out needing space. I couldn’t think with the guys standing so close and having just been reminded of what I’d been avoiding for years and painfully ached for.
Sebastian walked past the SUV and sports cars to an old maroon sedan with a dented front fender, parked in a dark corner of the garage, and opened the driver’s side door without unlocking it.
“I see we’re traveling in style,” Cassius said, his tone dry.
“You wanted bigger,” Sebastian replied with a shrug. “Flashing too much money around Lincoln is dangerous. It’s bad enough it looks like I have two bodyguards and angel arm candy.”
Cassius got into the front passenger seat. “Amiah is not arm candy.”
“She looks pretty hot to me.” Sebastian flashed me his wicked smile, making my insides warm with desire and frustration, and slid into the driver’s seat.
Titus grunted, but I didn’t know if it was in agreement or not and, eyeing the car with suspicion, got in the seat behind him.
“Flattery wouldn’t get you into my bed,” I said, shoving my feelings down and getting in as well.
“Oh?” Sebastian asked as he started the engine, his gaze meeting mine through the rear-view mirror. “Does that mean something else will?”
No, because you don’t really mean it.
A hint of smoke wrapped around Cassius and he rolled down his window. “Can we focus on the job at hand?”
“There isn’t much more to it,” Sebastian said, pressing a hand to his side and activating a glyph. Light flared from the glyph, bright in the garage’s low illumination, before dimming to an almost imperceptible level against his natural glow. “We go to Lincoln and get the resonance charm attuned to our resonances. And you—”
He pulled out of the garage, into early morning sunlight. The street was empty since we were in the vampire section of the Quarter and even with the UV-blocking canopy vampires were still mostly creatures of the night, but he still promptly stopped at a red light even though there wasn’t a single car on the road. “You keep yourself under control and don’t arrest anyone.”
“I’ve already promised I wouldn’t,” Cassius said, surprising me. Upholding the law was one of the main things that drove him, and he clung to it as if it kept him steady in a world of chaos. He hadn’t been so strict with rules and regulations before the war. He could let things slide if it meant justice prevailed. But after the war, it was as if the rules were the only thing holding him together, and while that had eased a bit in the last twenty years, it hadn’t gone away… and had gotten worse again in the last month. “Breaking the leash spell is the priority. Anything else would jeopardize that.”
Sebastian turned onto the main street leading out of the Quarter and headed to the park ring that separated the supers’ part of town from the humans’ part. “You just remember that once we get there.”
Dappled early morning sunlight flickered through the thick branches overhead as we drove into the park then filled the car in full as we crossed its threshold into the human part of Union City.
I didn’t often leave the Quarter, and I was always a little amazed at how different and modern the rest of Union felt compared to the Quarter.
The Quarter had originally been an older part of town, expropriated by the city to create an area for supers so they could live with humans but not necessarily right beside them. No one had known how the supernatural beings who’d come out of hiding to help save humanity from Michael would be received, but almost everyone had agreed they had as much right to live out in the open as humans. And while yes, there were modern buildings in the Quarter, most of the original structures had survived Michael’s assaults giving the Quarter an older feel with its nineteenth century brick buildings.
The buildings directly on the other side of the ring, however, were towering residential high rises that had been built in the mid to late twentieth century. Most were plain utilitarian concrete without any charm, and I had no idea why anyone would want to live there, although I suspected people did because they couldn’t afford some place better.
Which spoke volumes for those living there since a number of nice neighborhoods in Union had survived the assault while a significant number of the population hadn’t, making good places to live cheap and plentiful in the beginning. But that left out those from the smaller towns in the area who’d been forced to abandon their communities and move to Union. Those who took too long to realize the Joined Parliament wasn’t going to send revitalization money to their small town and instead focus on the larger cities lost out.
Sebastian headed south and I rolled down my window to alleviate the growing heat. Titus, after watching me, did the same. The day’s humidity was already building and without a cloud in the sky, it was going to be another beautiful, hot summer’s day. The breeze ruffled his shaggy red hair, and he leaned into it with his eyes closed and drew in a deep breath that expanded his massive chest.
“They didn’t let you fly, did they?” I said, the sudden realization breaking my heart. Not letting a dragon fly had to be as horrible as not letting a wolf run.
“No.”
“Did they even let you shift?” He’d been imprisoned for five hundred years. Not flying was terrible. Not shifting and releasing his beast would be soul crushing.
While shifters were still one being, they had two very distinct aspects to their soul that often made them feel like they were two separate entities in one body. And not being allowed to embrace both halves, be it beast or man, was psychologically and physically damaging. It was why shifters who weren’t naturally born shifters, those rare few infected with lycanthropy, had difficult transitions. Not only did the lycanthropy painfully rewrite their DNA, but they often saw their beast as a separate being and fought it instead of accepted it.
“No,” Titus said, his voice low, making my throat tighten.
“Have you shifted since you escaped?” I asked, trying to focus on his situation clinically and not emotionally. If he hadn’t, he was going to need to do so soon and appease his primal nature.
“Yes.”
Oh, thank goodness.
“You flew out of Faerie, didn’t you?” Sebastian said, driving into a deserted part of town, the buildings mostly rubble. “That’s why you fell out of the sky. You found a sky portal but didn’t account for the fact that if you have a shape more acceptable to the mortal realm a Faerie portal will shift you into that.”
“And I was struck just before I went through and couldn’t shift back in time,” Titus said, his face still turned to the wind and sun.
Sebastian swerved around a pothole. “That must have been some blow. You used to be one of the fastest shifters I knew.”
And it had been. My magic had locked onto Titus the moment he’d materialized in the mortal realm, which meant he’d already been seriously injured before he’d even hit the ground.
Titus grunted.
I reached out and firmly pressed my palm against his biceps, hoping that my small skin to skin touch would help calm his shifter’s soul. There wasn’t much I could do for the psychological trauma, but I could at least help steady him.
He stiffened, and for a moment I feared I’d gone too far by invading his personal space. Then, without turning away from the sun and wind, he rumbled low in his throat and captured my hand under his.
We stayed that way until Sebastian parked the sedan at the still-standing support for an overpass that ended fifty feet away in a nasty drop.
As if stopping was his cue, Titus climbed out of the car before Sebastian had even shut
off the engine, and pulled on a black ball cap that shaded his eyes so I couldn’t easily read his expression.
A mix of disappointment and sadness churned in my gut, fueled by my compulsion to heal. I understood, in part, the wounds in his soul, and I yearned, not for the first time, that my power was stronger and more complex. There was more to healing someone than just fixing his or her body and at times it felt like I was working with one hand tied behind my back.
Cassius pulled on a ball cap as well and added sunglasses that hid the glow from his eyes, although that wasn’t a perfect disguise. Yes, no one would be able to see his eyes, but anyone with the ability to sense essences — which was most of the super population — would know he was an angel. It was, however, better than nothing. Especially if the whole point was to avoid as much attention as possible given our unusual party.
I got out as well, forcing my gaze over the area to distract myself from my need to help Titus and my inability to do so. The area looked like it had been a mix of residential and small commercial buildings. Those behind us in the direction we’d come from were mostly leveled with only a few concrete shells of three- and four-story apartment buildings standing ghostly sentinel.
The destruction lessened as I turned my attention to what lay in front of the car, as if we were standing at the edge of the radius of a tremendous blast. And given the powerful magic Michael had commanded during the war, it could have been just one blast.
Ahead stood a modest, two-door mechanic’s garage. The roof had been ripped off — probably from the blast — and so had half of the sign, leaving only “& Son” creaking in the breeze. On its left sat another business, the sign gone so I had no idea what it had been. The big front window was broken, and the insides had been torn apart, likely from people scavenging everything that could be reused or recycled.
Sebastian led us down an alley between the two businesses that was so narrow Titus’s shoulders brushed either side, and along an uneven dirt path heading down into a wooded ravine.